Samenvatting

The authors examine the remarkable rise of cyberspace as an arena of interest for national and international security policy through the prism of 'securitization' theory. Considering the relative few serious cyber attacks to date, what explains this rise to prominence and is it actually justified, or are there drawbacks to this state of affairs? This question is highly relevant as the cyber security issue indeed reached to the very top of the political and military agenda, even acquiring additional funding in times of cutbacks and scarcity. By using the metaphor of a marketplace, the stakeholders, the 'securitizing' agents, the process itself and the outcome of the security-versus-privacy/freedom debate is introduced, including the notion of 'desecuritization'.